Dynamic advance reservation with delayed allocation

ABSTRACT

A method of scheduling data transmissions from a source to a destination, includes the steps of: providing a communication system having a number of channels and a number of paths, each of the channels having a plurality of designated time slots; receiving two or more data transmission requests; provisioning the transmission of the data; receiving data corresponding to at least one of the two or more data transmission requests; waiting until an earliest requested start time T s ; allocating at the current time each of the two or more data transmission requests; transmitting the data; and repeating the steps of waiting, allocating, and transmitting until each of the two or more data transmission requests that have been provisioned for a transmission of data is satisfied. A system to perform the method of scheduling data transmissions is also described.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application claims priority to and the benefit of co-pending U.S.provisional patent application Ser. No. 61/501,665, filed Jun. 27, 2011,which application is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.

STATEMENT REGARDING FEDERALLY FUNDED RESEARCH OR DEVELOPMENT

The invention described herein was made in the performance of work underDepartment of Energy Grant DE-SC0004909, and is subject to theprovisions of Public Law 96-517 (35 U.S.C. §202) in which the Contractorhas elected to retain title.

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

The invention relates to scheduling multiple tasks given finiteresources to perform the tasks in general and more particularly toscheduling data transmission on a communication network having fixedbandwidth resources.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

A Grid network is a collection of geographically distributed resources,such as storage nodes, super computers, and scientific equipment thatare accessible to users over a network. These networks often deal withthe transfer of large amounts of data (e.g., in the terabytes topetabytes range). A common traffic model used for such application isthe dynamic traffic model. Requests are assumed to arrive sequentially,according to a stochastic process, and have finite holding times. Thegoal of the routing process is to minimize request blocking, where auser's request is primarily denied only due to lack of resources.Traditionally, the data transmission for an immediate reservation (IR)demand starts right after arrival of the request and the holding time istypically unknown. In contrast, an advance reservation (AR) typicallyspecifies a data transmission start time that is sometime in the futureand also specifies the desired holding time.

Advance reservation methods were originally proposed for electronicnetworks followed by optical networks such as the AR method described byJ. Zheng, et. al. in “Routing and wavelength assignment for advancereservation in wavelength-routed WDM optical networks,” Proceedings,IEEE International Conference on Communications, vol. 5, 2002, pp.2722-2726 (2002). Since then, a number of continuous routing andwavelength assignment (RWA) heuristics based on static route computationhave been proposed. These heuristics generally use the same basicstructure, differing only in how they select the segment. They scanpossible starting timeslots over all available lightpaths and choose asegment according to some criteria. Path switching for flexible advancereservation in electronic networks has also been proposed.

There is a need for a more efficient routing system and routing methodfor large data transfers over Grid networks

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

According to one aspect, the invention features a method of schedulingdata transmissions from a source to a destination, including the stepsof: providing: a communication system having a number of channels and anumber of paths, each of the channels having a plurality of designatedtime slots, and a bandwidth defined as the number of channels multipliedby the number of paths, and a bandwidth capacity defined as thebandwidth multiplied by the number of designated time slots; receivingtwo or more data transmission requests, each of the two or more datatransmission requests designating a transmission of data from a sourceto a destination, each of the two or more data transmission requestsincluding a requested start time T_(s) of transmission and a requestednumber of time slots for the transmission of the data; provisioning thetransmission of the data corresponding to each of the two or more datatransmission requests via the communication bandwidth withoutdesignating a channel of the number of channels and without designatinga path of the number of paths; receiving data corresponding to at leastone of the two or more data transmission requests; waiting until acurrent time within a time interval t of an earliest requested starttime T_(s) of the two or more data transmission requests; allocating atthe current time each of the two or more data transmission requests to achannel of the number of channels and to a path of the number of pathsin a way which optimizes a use of the bandwidth capacity; transmittingthe data corresponding to the at least one of the two or more datatransmission requests that has been allocated on the allocated channeland the allocated path; and repeating the steps of waiting, allocating,and transmitting until each of the two or more data transmissionrequests that have been provisioned for a transmission of data issatisfied.

In one embodiment, the step of provisioning the transmission includesprovisioning the transmission of the data during a request provisioningphase.

In another embodiment, the step of allocating includes allocating atleast one of the two or more data transmission requests during a requestallocation phase.

In yet another embodiment, the step of providing a communicationbandwidth is performed using an optical communication network.

In yet another embodiment, the step of providing an opticalcommunication network is performed using an optical communicationnetwork having wavelength division multiplexed transmission capability.

According to one aspect, the invention features a system forprovisioning data transmission from a source to a destination whichincludes a communication system having a number of channels and a numberof paths. Each of the channels having a plurality of designated timeslots, in which a communication bandwidth is defined as the product ofthe number of channels times the number of paths and a bandwidthcapacity is defined as the product of the bandwidth times the number ofdesignated time slots. A processor has instructions provided on amachine readable medium. The processor is configured to perform thefollowing steps when the instructions are operative: determining thecommunication bandwidth and the bandwidth capacity; receiving two ormore data transmission requests, each of the two or more datatransmission requests designating a transmission of data from a sourceto a destination, each of the two or more data transmission requestsincluding a requested start time T_(s) of transmission and a requestednumber of time slots for the transmission of the data; provisioning thetransmission of the data corresponding to each of the two or more datatransmission requests via the communication bandwidth withoutdesignating a channel of the number of channels and without designatinga path of the number of paths; receiving data corresponding to at leastone of the two or more data transmission requests; waiting until acurrent time within a time interval t of an earliest requested starttime T_(s) of the two or more data transmission requests; allocating atthe current time each of the two or more data transmission requests to achannel of the number of channels and to a path of the number of pathsin a way which optimizes a use of the bandwidth capacity; transmittingthe data corresponding to the at least one of the two or more datatransmission requests that has been allocated on the allocated channeland the allocated path; and repeating the steps of waiting, allocating,and transmitting until each of the two or more data transmissionrequests that have been provisioned for a transmission of data issatisfied.

The foregoing and other objects, aspects, features, and advantages ofthe invention will become more apparent from the following descriptionand from the claims.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The objects and features of the invention can be better understood withreference to the drawings described below, and the claims. The drawingsare not necessarily to scale, emphasis instead generally being placedupon illustrating the principles of the invention. In the drawings, likenumerals are used to indicate like parts throughout the various views.

FIG. 1 shows a flow chart of a generalized view of the single slotreservation method according to the invention.

FIG. 2 shows an overview block diagram of a system suitable to performthe inventive method.

FIG. 3A to FIG. 3D show time-slot time-lines and provisioning andallocation examples for the ASAR and the SSAR methods.

FIG. 4A to FIG. 4D show time-slot time-line diagrams of a single-slotadvance reservation for two paths (P1, P2) where each path includes twochannels (λ₁ and λ₂).

FIG. 5 shows one example of pseudo code suitable for performing channelallocation according to principles of the invention.

FIG. 6A shows a graph of average blocking probability for the SSAR andthe ASAR methods vs. load for constant book-ahead times.

FIG. 6B shows a graph of average blocking probability for the SSAR andthe ASAR methods vs. load for uniformly distributed book-ahead times.

FIG. 7 shows a schematic illustration of a Unicast embodiment of a SSARsystem and method according to the invention.

FIG. 8 shows a schematic illustration of a Multicast SSAR system andmethod according to the invention.

FIG. 9 shows a schematic illustration of a Anycast embodiment of a SSARsystem and method according to the invention.

FIG. 10 shows a schematic illustration of a Manycast SSAR system andmethod according to the invention.

FIG. 11 shows a schematic illustration of a network where each of thenodes can transmit on any channel and where a request can be from one ormore source nodes to one or more destination nodes.

FIG. 12 is an NC-SSAR illustration.

FIG. 13A is a graph showing a comparison of heuristics for constantbookahead times without flexibility and k=1 for Average BlockingProbability for AR requests.

FIG. 13B is a graph showing a comparison of heuristics for constantbookahead times without flexibility and k=1 for Average Start Delay forAR requests.

FIG. 13C is a graph showing a comparison of heuristics for constantbookahead times without flexibility and k=1 for Average Lightpathswitches for AR requests.

FIG. 13D is a graph showing a comparison of heuristics for constantbookahead times without flexibility and k=1 for Out-of-order measure forAR requests.

FIG. 14A is a graph showing a comparison of heuristics for constantbookahead times with flexibility and k=1 for Average BlockingProbability for AR requests.

FIG. 14B is a graph showing a comparison of heuristics for constantbookahead times with flexibility and k=1 for Average Start Delay for ARrequests.

FIG. 14C is a graph showing a comparison of heuristics for constantbookahead times with flexibility and k=1 for Average Lightpath switchesfor AR requests.

FIG. 14D is a graph showing a comparison of heuristics for constantbookahead times with flexibility and k=1 for Out-of-order measure for ARrequests.

FIG. 15A is a graph showing a comparison of heuristics for uniformlyrandom bookahead times without flexibility and k=1 for Average BlockingProbability for AR requests.

FIG. 15B is a graph showing a comparison of heuristics for uniformlyrandom bookahead times without flexibility and k=1 for Average StartDelay for AR requests.

FIG. 15C is a graph showing a comparison of heuristics for uniformlyrandom bookahead times without flexibility and k=1 for Average Lightpathswitches for AR requests.

FIG. 15D is a graph showing a comparison of heuristics for uniformlyrandom bookahead times without flexibility and k=1 for Out-of-ordermeasure for AR requests.

FIG. 16A is a graph showing a comparison of heuristics for uniformlyrandom bookahead times with flexibility and k=1 for Average BlockingProbability for AR requests.

FIG. 16B is a graph showing a comparison of heuristics for uniformlyrandom bookahead times with flexibility and k=1 for Average Start Delayfor AR requests.

FIG. 16C is a graph showing a comparison of heuristics for uniformlyrandom bookahead times with flexibility and k=1 for Average Lightpathswitches for AR requests.

FIG. 16D is a graph showing a comparison of heuristics for uniformlyrandom bookahead times with flexibility and k=1 for Out-of-order measurefor AR requests.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

We describe hereinbelow, a new continuous advance reservation processthat checks all of the possible slots (e.g., time-slots) in a requests'shorizon. This description presents a new approach to the all-slotsadvanced reservation (ASAR) process such as was described byCharbonneau, et. al. in “Dynamic Non-Continuous Advance Reservation overWavelength-Routed Networks,” University of Massachusetts Dartmouth,Computer Science, Master's Thesis, September, 2010.

A data transmission time is typically time slotted and each dynamicrequest typically uses multiple contiguous time slots on the samewavelength path. Traditional advance reservation can lead to resourcefragmentation where small gaps in wavelength usage cannot be utilized.Our new system and method does not create any fragmentation as a resultof delayed resource allocation. If a gap is created, it is because thereis no request to use a particular time slot. We overcome unnecessaryblocking by allocating a “channel” (e.g. a wavelength path or lightpath), by using a two step process in which the channel is allocated,typically at a later time, when the request is actually being served. Werefer to the new system and method according to invention as a singleslot advance reservation (SSAR) system and method. As described in moredetail hereinbelow, SSAR simplifies control of the process. We alsodescribe hereinbelow how the SSAR system and method out-performsexisting ASAR methods and the associated continuous flexible advancereservation heuristics.

Single Slot Advance Reservation (SSAR) System and Method GeneralApproach

FIG. 1 shows a flow chart of a generalized view of the single slotreservation method according to the invention. The generalized SSARmethod of scheduling data transmissions from a source to a destination,includes the steps of providing a communication system (101) having anumber of channels and a number of paths, each of the channels having aplurality of designated time slots, and a bandwidth defined as thenumber of channels multiplied by the number of paths, and a bandwidthcapacity defined as the bandwidth multiplied by the number of designatedtime slots; receiving two or more data transmission requests (103), eachof the two or more data transmission requests designating a transmissionof data from a source to a destination, each of the two or more datatransmission requests including a requested start time T_(s) oftransmission and a requested number of time slots for the transmissionof the data; provisioning the transmission of the data (105)corresponding to each of the two or more data transmission requests viathe communication bandwidth without designating a channel of the numberof channels and without designating a path of the number of paths;receiving the data (107) corresponding to at least one of the two ormore data transmission requests; waiting until a current time within atime interval t of an earliest requested start time T_(s) (109) of thetwo or more data transmission requests; allocating at the current time(111) each of the two or more data transmission requests to a channel ofthe number of channels and to a path of the number of paths in a waywhich optimizes a use of the bandwidth capacity; transmitting the data(113) corresponding to the at least one of the two or more datatransmission requests that has been allocated on the allocated channeland the allocated path; and repeating the steps of waiting, allocating,and transmitting (115) until each of the two or more data transmissionrequests that have been provisioned for a transmission of data issatisfied.

In the description which follows hereinbelow, the step of provisioningthe transmission generally takes place during a “request provisioningphase” (RPP), and the step of allocating generally takes place in a“request allocation phase” (RAP).

While the method is believed to be generally applicable to any type ofscheduled multiple activities, in the context of data transmission, itis believed to be advantageous particularly in the field of opticalcommunication, such as pertains to data transmission over an opticalnetwork. Such optical networks typically use a multiplexing scheme toafford more channels than the number of optical fibers present in anygiven fiber optic cable. For example, one such multiplexed opticalnetwork scheme which is suitable to provide additional channels peroptical fiber for the inventive method is an optical communicationnetwork having wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) transmissioncapability.

FIG. 2 shows an overview block diagram of a system suitable to performthe inventive method. A system for provisioning data transmission from asource to a destination, using the SSAR method typically includes acommunication system (201) having a number of channels and a number ofpaths (not shown in FIG. 2), each of the channels has a plurality ofdesignated time slots, in which a communication bandwidth is defined asthe product of the number of channels times the number of paths and abandwidth capacity is defined as the product of the bandwidth times thenumber of designated time slots. A processor (203) has instructionsprovided on a machine readable medium. The processor is configured toperform the following steps when the instructions are operative:determining the communication bandwidth and the bandwidth capacity;receiving two or more data transmission requests, each of the two ormore data transmission requests designating a transmission of data froma source (e.g., 205) to a destination (e.g. 207), each of the two ormore data transmission requests including a requested start time T_(s)of transmission and a requested number of time slots for thetransmission of the data. The generalized SSAR steps are as describedhereinabove, provisioning the transmission of the data corresponding toeach of the two or more data transmission requests via the communicationbandwidth without designating a channel of the number of channels andwithout designating a path of the number of paths; receiving datacorresponding to at least one of the two or more data transmissionrequests; waiting until a current time within a time interval t of anearliest requested start time T_(s) of the two or more data transmissionrequests; allocating at the current time each of the two or more datatransmission requests to a channel of the number of channels and to apath of the number of paths in a way which optimizes a use of thebandwidth capacity; transmitting the data corresponding to the at leastone of the two or more data transmission requests that has beenallocated on the allocated channel and the allocated path; and repeatingthe steps of waiting, allocating, and transmitting until each of the twoor more data transmission requests that have been provisioned for atransmission of data is satisfied.

Comparison of SSAR with all-Slots Advance Reservation (ASAR)

Next, we discuss issues related to the prior art ASAR process and thencompare a prior art ASAR method to an SSAR system and method accordingto the invention. Exemplary embodiments of a SSAR control process andthe corresponding exemplary data structures suitable for use in an SSARsystem and method according to the invention are described. Also, theperformance of the inventive SSAR system and method is compared to theperformance of an ASAR process of the prior art.

ASAR

An all-slots advance reservation (ASAR) process of the prior art assumesthat a fixed number of precomputed wavelength paths exist between asource and a destination. Each pre-computed path is assigned a route anda wavelength and is referred to as a channel. Each channel is dividedinto time slots that are time synchronized with each respect to eachother. An incoming request is assumed to use a set of contiguous slots.Thus a cross product of all pre-computed channels (paths) and futuretime-slots form the total available resource pool. The ASAR processkeeps track of channels-time slots for the advance reservation period.

Upon arrival of a request for service, the ASAR process checks theavailability of the requested time slots for all channels starting withthe requested start time slot. It chooses a channel that fits the bestfor the request in hand. Given all starting time and channelcombinations, there may be multiple potential channels to select from.ASAR methods use a Best-Fit approach. If time slots are available, thenit immediately books/reserves the entire duration of the request andnotifies the source that the request is accepted by returning a validnon-empty schedule. The reserved time slots on the selected channel arealso reserved. If the time slots are not available then the source isnotified that the request is blocked.

Checking the availability of time slots on wavelengths and schedulingreservations are intertwined. The controller needs to check all existingschedules to accept/reject a request and then to schedule the channelfor the new reservation request. Thus, the ASAR methods use relativelycomplex processes. ASAR performs well if the book-ahead time is aconstant, such as when a request must arrive, say k slots in advance ofthe requested slot. However, if the requests arrive with variablebook-ahead times, then the ASAR method may lead to higher blocking. Thehigher blocking is a direct result of preallocation of the channel. Thesingle-slot advance reservation (SSAR) system and method describedherein solves the problem of blocking caused by channel preallocation.

Before describing the SSAR process in more formal terms, we first useexamples to demonstrate the shortcoming of the ASAR process. Thefollowing examples illustrate the problems of blocking (e.g., blockingusing ASAR methods of the prior art) as related to preallocation.

Problem with Preallocation of Channels in ASAR

Suppose the requests (e.g. for data transmission) are denoted by using a3-tuple, <number, starting slot, # of slots>, where number is thedynamic request identifier, starting slot is the earliest slot that therequest can use in the future, and # of slots is the request duration inunits of slots. Note that the book-ahead time (in terms of slots) foreach request can be computed implicitly as request starting slot-arrivalslot.

FIG. 3A to FIG. 3D show time slot time lines and provisioning andallocation examples for the ASAR and the SSAR methods. For example,consider a case where there are two channels (e.g., λ₁ and λ₂) and thesystem state is currently prior to time slot 0 (t₀). A request number 1arrives with starting slot number 3 and number of slots requested 2, or<1,3,2>. Suppose, for example, that channel 1 is allocated (FIG. 3A).Next, a second request <2,1,1> (“R2”—second request, starting slot 1, 1slot to be used) arrives. There are two cases. Suppose, the secondrequest is allocated channel 2 (FIG. 3A). In this case, if a thirdrequest <3,0,4> arrives (FIG. 3A, right side), it is blocked as shown inFIG. 3A. Without preallocation the third request would not have beenblocked, as two channels are at most needed in any slots and there aretwo channels. Alternately, suppose now that request 2 is allocatedchannel 1 (FIG. 3B). In this latter case, suppose a third request<3,2,3> arrives using the SSAR method (FIG. 3B). The third request cannow be allocated on channel 2.

Now, turning to FIG. 3C and FIG. 3D, suppose a fourth request“R4”<4,0,3> arrives. As shown in FIG. 3C, according to the ASAR methodof the prior art, the fourth request would have to be blocked. However,using the inventive SSAR method without preallocation (FIG. 3D), thefourth request “R4” would not be blocked. Thus, a delayed allocation ofthe channel using SSAR according to the invention, leads to an efficientsolution and solves the problem of blocking as related to preallocation.In the simpler case where the book-ahead time for all the requests isconstant, the ASAR process can work well, but never better than the SSARmethod.

Single-Slot Advance Reservation (SSAR)

We have developed a new two-phase resource provisioning and allocationprocess called single-slot advance reservation (SSAR). The inventiveprocess solves the problem of blocking as related to preallocation bythe use two phases: 1) a request provisioning phase (RPP) and 2) arequest allocation phase (RAP). To demonstrate the process, we considerthe same scenario which was described hereinabove with regard to ASAR.As before, requests are assigned one of the many wavelength pathsavailable between a source and a destination and each of these paths istime slotted. An incoming request specifies how many (multiple) timeslots are needed, starting with a specific time slot. The correspondingdata transmission which eventually follows preferably should use thesame wavelength path during the entire duration of the request. Arequest is either accepted if the necessary resources (e.g. a startingslot and a number of slots for a transmission of data) are available oris blocked if the resources needed to fulfill a particular request arenot available.

In the request provisioning phase, the SSAR system and method onlychecks whether or not the request can be provisioned without doing anyactual resource allocation. If the request can be provisioned, then whenas the clock advances towards the request's start time, a singletime-slot is reserved for this request, while keeping the future timeslots open for reservation. The SSAR approach of separating theprovisioning step from the allocation step can be used to guarantee thata request continues on the same channel. An exemplary SSAR controllerdata structure and process suitable to perform the SSAR method isdescribed in more detail hereinbelow.

FIG. 4A to FIG. 4D show time slot “time line diagrams” of a single-slotadvance reservation for two paths (P1, P2) where each path includes twochannels (λ₁ and λ₂). FIG. 4A to FIG. 4D depict how the slot assignmentprocess performs as time progresses (i.e., from time slot t₀ to timeslot t₃). The blocks represent either time slots available or time slotsreserved. The example uses three requests <1,4,1> (“R1”—request one,start time slot 4, one slot needed), “R2”—<2,2,2>, and “R3”—<3,3,13>.Each request is successively routed onto a separate channel one at atime and continued on that same channel. Using the same approach as inthe first example, the requests will be routed so that requests 2 andrequest 1 are routed on channel 1 (FIG. 4B, FIG. 4C) and request 3 isrouted on channel 2 (FIG. 4D). Note that FIG. 4D ends at time slot t₃,and the remaining 12 contiguous time slots of the 13 slot “R3” requestare not shown in the figures.

Thus, it can be seen that the SSAR system and method performs better incomparison to ASAR. It also reduces the complexity of the scheduler.SSAR keeps track of the number of channels available in all time slotsin the first phase and allocates resources on a single-slot reservationbasis in the second phase. A system using this inventive separation ofthe provisioning and allocation steps has less scheduler controlcomplexity and can accommodate more requests. Such a centralizedscheduler implementation is more scalable. Also, since signaling isperformed only when a request is started and terminated, the SSAR methoddoes not increase signaling needs.

SSAR Centralized Scheduler

The controls for the resource provisioning phase (RPP) and for theresource allocation phase (RAP) for a request are independent of eachother. The RPP only considers if a channel is available in all requestedslots to serve the request as needed. Then at a later time, RAPallocates the actual channel to be used. RAP also guarantees that eachrequest is allocated the same channel throughout its contiguouslifetime.

We now define a few terms and relationships used in the descriptionwhich follows hereinbelow. The current slot number is numbered 0. Thestarting time of a reservation is maintained with respect to the currenttime slot. Thus as time advances, the relative starting time of arequest approaches 0, and when it becomes 0, the request is served inthat slot. The control system keeps a global slot counter which is setto zero at the starting of the system. A request is made using the starttime value synchronized with the global slot counter. For the purpose ofcontrol, the system converts the start time to relative time withrespect to current slot (0). To illustrate this conversion, suppose theglobal slot time counter has a value of t_(g). An incoming request rarrives with a start time, t_(r) and the number of slots needed, s_(r).Then the relative start time for this request would be set tot_(r)−t_(g). The request will be active from slot number t_(r)−t_(g) toslot number t_(r)−t_(g)+s_(r)−1. The request numbers (modulo some largenumber) may be assigned by the system to an incoming request to keeptrack of other parameters of the requests. We only keep track of therequest number. For simplicity, other information which does not impactthe centralized scheduling process is left out of the description whichfollows.

Data Structures and Rationale

In order to implement RPP, the centralized scheduler has to maintain thefollowing data structures:

Slot Occupancy Counters (SOC)

The process defines a number N of them, where N is the horizon or thenumber of slots for which reservation can be made currently. The firstslot or the current slot is referred to as t₀ and next N−1 slots arereferred to as t₁ to t_(N−1). The maximum value any SOC can store issame as the maximum number of channels available. For example, for Mchannels, log M bit counters would be sufficient. Logical slot numbersautomatically advance (go down) as the global slot counter increases(since the current slot is always numbered 0). Reservation table (orreservation lists)

All reservations are stored in a request table that may store severalparameters associated with the request. However, for the purpose of thecontrol, we maintain one reservation list (assumed to be a linked list)for each slot, i.e., t₀ to t_(N−1), each with up to M entries, where Mis the number of channels available for allocation. In reality, thenumber of entries in the list is no more than the total number ofoutstanding reservation for that slot (see hereinbelow for moreexplanation). This number of entries is large enough to avoid blockingdue to the lack of space in the reservation table. Each entry stores therequests that are to start in that slot.

The format of each entry in the list is <reservation-number,sub-reservation-number, # of slots, allocated-channel>. Whenever a newreservation <r, t_(r), s_(r)> is made, the reservation-number is set tor, the sub-reservation-number is set to 0, the reservation-starting-timeis not stored, but the entry is stored in the list t_(r)−t_(g) (recallt_(r)>t_(g)), and number-of-slots is set to s_(r). When a channel isallocated to this request, the channel-number-allocated is set.

Since the logical slot number advances automatically, the reservationlists are automatically renamed. Since we do not keep track ofreservation list of logical slot numbers prior to t₀, the list for slot0 is updated to carry forward all continuing requests. The process tocarry out this task is described hereinbelow in more detail.

The table can either be maintained in the order of starting times or inthe order of arrival of the AR requests. In the first case, it is easierto identify requests that need to be scheduled in the next time slot. Inthe latter case, all table entries are scanned to identify whichrequests need to be scheduled. In either case all table entries areupdated. The way we choose is typically closer to the first way, as itnot only identifies request starting in that slot but also makesupdating easier. First we do not need to update the starting time as therelative slot number is automatically updated with the global slotcounter. Therefore an implied sorted order offers this particularadvantage. In some embodiments, we can also maintain table entries as alinked list. Each new entry is appended at the end of the list as itdoes not matter in what order channels are allocated, since all acceptedrequests will be allocated a channel. Each time a request is completed,the request entry is dropped. Entries in the tables/lists are updated inevery slot as described.

Channel-Status

For each channel, a status of channel is set to be free or in-use. Ifthe channel is in-use, then additional information about the request,e.g., sub-request, etc., is also maintained. In some embodiments, thisinformation can be kept in two lists. One list can be in an array formChannel-Status [M], where information about each channel, i.e., in useor free, request and sub-request number being served on the channel, andwhen it will become free is stored. The last piece of information isredundant and is kept for monitoring purposes only. The second list canbe a linked list of free channels, Free-Channels. When a channel isreleased, its number is added in the list. A Channel-Status array canalso be updated as free. A channel allocation process picks up one ofthe free channels, removes it from Free-Channels, and then allocates itfor communication and updates Channel-Status array appropriately.

Advance Reservation Requests

Requests can be of the following three types: (a) a simple request rasking for s_(r) contiguous slots starting at slot t_(r); (b) a multipleslot request r_(m) asking for m channels for s_(r) _(m) contiguous slotsstarting at slot t_(r) _(m) ; and (c) a non-contiguous request r_(n)asking for one channel for s_(r) _(n) slots starting at slot t_(r) _(n)and finish before end slot e_(r) _(n) .

A simple request of type (a) will be handled in the way as describedbelow under resource provisioning and resource allocation paragraphs.The request is accepted only if a slot can be made available to it fromslot number t_(r)−t_(g) to slot number t_(r)−t_(g)+s_(r)−1.

The request of type (b) will be accepted only if m channels can beallocated to it from slot number t_(r)−t_(g) to slot numbert_(r)−t_(g)+s_(r)−1. Otherwise, the request is rejected. The controlsystem checks for availability of m slots instead of one slot, as wouldbe the case for a request of type (a). If the request is accepted, thisrequest will be sub-divided into m sub-requests and inserted in thereservation list as such. The sub-reservation-number field is assignedvalues of 1 to m, respectively, to distinguish among them.

The request of type (c) can also be handled in the same way, except thatthe control system will consider slots from t_(r) _(n) to slot e_(r)_(n) and accept the request if and only if it can find s_(r) _(n) slotsin that interval that are available. These slots can be selected in morethan one way, such as by using the first available slots, using theleast-used slots, or by using the last available slots. Search processessuitable for use in all of these cases are well known in the art, andtherefore are not discussed here. After the slots that are to be usedare determined, the request is sub-divided into multiple sub-requests.The sum of the slots used for all sub-requests equals s_(r) _(n) . Eachsub-request has a different starting slot number that corresponds to theavailable slot location identified in the previous step. To illustratethe process, suppose a request r calls for 5 slots starting with slotlocation 2 and completion before slot number 11 (i.e. the time frame ofslot 2 to slot 10). Suppose the slot finding process identifies thatslots 3,4,6,7, and 9 are free. Then this request is subdivided intothree sub requests <r,3,2>, <r,6,2>, and <r,9,1> with sub-requestnumbers, l, 2, and 3, respectively. If less than 5 slots were available,then the request would have been rejected.

Notice that the process to handle all reservation therefore becomesequivalent to handling a request of type (a). Therefore in the followingdescription, we assume that all requests are of type (a).

Resource Provisioning Phase

When an AR request <r, t_(r), s_(r)> arrives, (or other requests areconverted to such requests), SOCs (slot occupancy counters) startingfrom

t_(t_(r) − t_(g))  to  t_(t_(r) − t_(g) + s_(r) − 1)

are checked to see that each of them has at least one channel free inthe RPP. If so, the request is accepted, is included in the request listt_(r)−t_(g), where t_(g) is the global slot counter. Recall that this isthe relative slot number. SOCs for slots

t_(t_(r) − t_(g))  to  t_(t_(r) − t_(g) + s_(r) − 1)

are incremented by one (for type (b) requests SOCs will be updated foreach sub-request or can be updated by value m in one shot while eachsub-request is included in the reservations lists. If channels are notavailable, the request is rejected. Notice that channel-number-allocatedis set to null as no channel is allocated to the request yet.

Resource Allocation (and Deallocation) Phase

The channel allocation process is carried out for one slot at a time inthe RAP. Thus when the requests are being serviced in current time slot(t₀), the channel allocation process is carried out for slot (t₁), whichwill be renamed as t₀ at the end of the slot. All other slots also arerenumbered. Thus we describe the process only with respect to slot t₀and t₁ and the process is repeated after each slot.

There are three kinds of requests that need to be handled in the channelallocation/deallocation.

1. Request that are continuing in slot t₁.

2. Request that are terminating after t₀.

3. Request that are starting in slot t₁.

The first two sets of request are in a reservation list of t₀. The thirdset of requests is in a reservation list of slot t₁. FIG. 5 shows oneexemplary method using pseudo code suitable for performing channelallocation. The process will continue the on-going requests on the samechannel, remove completing requests from the lists, and then allocatenew channels to requests starting in the next slot. A free channel isguaranteed to be available as the number of requests accepted for anyslot is no more than the number of channels (SOC≦M).

Performance Evaluation

We now turn to a description of simulation results comparing the SSARmethod according to the invention to a prior art ASAR method. We usedthe following parameters: the arrival process was a Poisson process withan exponentially distributed holding time, the book-ahead times of theAR requests were considered to be either constant (1440 slots) and wereuniformly distributed. The horizon was relatively large (equal to 2000timeslots). We choose a mean value of 15 time-slots for our requestduration. We then simulated 10⁶ AR requests and took the average of 20runs. We used k precomputed paths between each source-destination pair.We evaluated our heuristics on the 14-node NSFnet.

FIG. 6A and FIG. 6B depict some initial results with k=1 path withconstant and uniformly distributed book-ahead times. FIG. 6A shows agraph average blocking probability plotted versus load (Erlangs)comparing SSAR according to the invention to the ASAR method of theprior art for constant book-ahead times. FIG. 6B shows a graph averageblocking probability plotted versus load (Erlangs) comparing SSARaccording to the invention to the ASAR method of the prior art foruniformly distributed book-ahead times. It can be concluded from theseresults that the SSAR system and method performs well in comparison tothe prior art ASAR method. In fact with SSAR, capacity blocking is theonly reason for blocking.

In this description, we addressed the problem of scheduler scalability,signaling and response time by introducing a novel two-phase approach insolving the dynamic advance reservation routing, slot, and thewavelength assignment problem. By comparing SSAR methods according tothe invention, to the ASAR method of the prior art, we conclude thatSSAR process as described herein is better than the baseline heuristic.The SSAR method keeps the scheduler simple and avoids pre-allocation ofbandwidth. The SSAR method according to the invention is optimal andtherefore better than prior art methods for provisioning lightpaths forAR requests over WDM networks in terms of efficient scheduler statemanagement, reduced signaling, faster response times to user requests interms of whether requests were accepted or rejected, and centralizedscheduler scalability at higher loads and for large networks. It is alsocontemplated that the inventive SSAR method can be extended tonon-continuous advance reservation techniques.

SSAR with Time Flexibility

Demands that specify a start time and duration are denoted STSD. In someembodiments, for STSD requests with flexibility, we can implement theresource provisioning phase (RPP) and the resource allocation phase(RAP) similar to the STSD requests with fixed time. The difference isthat in the RPP, the centralized scheduler tries all possible startingtimes in the sliding window using a first-fit mechanism. If the requestfinds the necessary bandwidth, the RAP phase is called at the startingtime of the request.

The SSAR method can be applied to several different kinds ofcommunication requests as described hereinbelow in a system in whichseveral parallel channels are set between possible sources anddestinations. One such exemplary system is shown in FIG. 11 wherechannels are set up in a network, such as an optical network (i.e., byfinding the right paths in network). In this exemplary embodiment, eachof the nodes can transmit on any channel (i.e., can use one or morechannels), and a request is from one or more nodes to one or moredestinations. Any node can act as a source or as a destination.

Unicast SSAR

FIG. 7 shows a conceptual illustration of a Unicast embodiment of a SSARsystem and method according to the invention. In unicast communicationdata is transmitted from a single source to a single destination. Ourbasic SSAR method supports provisioning and allocation of unicastadvance reservation requests.

Multicast SSAR

FIG. 8 shows a conceptual illustration of a Multicast SSAR system andmethod according to the invention. Multicast is a communication paradigmin which data is transmitted from a source to a set of destinations. Inthis embodiment, the SSAR process is implemented for each tree from thesource to all the destinations. The final communication tree (e.g. alight-tree) (route+wavelength+slots) is set up between the source andall of the multicast destinations.

Anycast SSAR

FIG. 9 shows a conceptual illustration of an Anycast embodiment of aSSAR system and method according to the invention. Anycast is acommunication paradigm that can provide an intelligent selection of adestination node for distributed applications. Anycast refers to atransmission of data from a source to any one destination out of a setof candidate destinations. In this embodiment, the SSAR method isrepeated from each source to candidate destination. The communication(e.g., light path) is set up between the source and the bestdestination.

Manycast SSAR

FIG. 10 shows a conceptual illustration of a Manycast SSAR system andmethod according to the invention. Manycasting is a more generic version(of Anycasting), which supports communication from a sender to any k outof m (k≦m) candidate destinations where the candidate destination set,|D_(c)|=m, is a subset of nodes in the network. If we change theparameters of the manycast request, we can also perform unicast (k=m=1),multicast (k=m>1), and anycast (k=1<m). The difference between multicastand manycast is that in multicast, the destinations are specified aheadof time, whereas in manycast the destinations are chosen. Thisflexibility results in network resources being utilized efficiently.From an energy perspective, the energy consumption (in manycasting) canbe lowered in the following ways: a source node can select the “best”destinations from the candidate destination set, thus using lesstransmission power. The choice of destination nodes selected can also bebased on the energy of the source (renewable/non-renewable). In thiscontext, we promote manycasting as an energy-efficient variation ofmulticasting.

Manycast is a communication paradigm in which data is transmitted from asource to a set of candidate destinations. In this embodiment, the SSARprocess is implemented for each tree from the source to all thedestinations. The final communication tree (e.g. the light-tree of anoptical network) (route+wavelength+slots) is set up between the sourceand the all the multicast destinations.

Peer-to-Peer (P2P) SSAR

In a P2P communication paradigm, one or more sources can transmit datato one or more destinations. A P2P request is from one (or more nodes)to one or more destinations. In this embodiment, the SSAR process isimplemented for each tree from one or more sources to one or moredestinations. The final communication tree (e.g. the light-tree or alight-trail of an optical network) (route+wavelength+slots) is set upconnecting all the sources and destinations for a given connectionrequest.

Additional Approaches

We have also investigated the problem of provisioning lightpaths fordynamic advance reservation (AR) requests in all optical wavelengthdivision multiplexed networks. We describe a two-phase novel routing,slot, and wavelength assignment (RWSA) technique called Non-ContinuousSingle-Slot Advance Reservation (NC-SSAR). We describe two NC-SSARheuristics, one with only lightpath segmentation (SEG-NC-SSAR) and theother with lightpath segmentation and lightpath switching (LPSNC-SSAR).We briefly discuss three baseline RWSA heuristics and compare them withthe described heuristics. Through extensive simulations, we show thatthe described NC-SSAR heuristics can solve the RWSA problem moreeffectively and efficiently by providing significantly lower blockingand reducing the overall signaling in the network by minimizing thenumber of lightpath switches, compared to the baseline RWSA heuristics.

Optical wavelength-routed WDM networks are a potential candidate forfuture wide-area backbone networks as well as scientific Grid networks.An optical WDM network consists of fibers connected by switches, oroptical cross connects (OXCs). In order to transmit data over thenetwork, a dedicated circuit is established when a user submits aconnection request. When a connection request arrives at the network,the request must be routed over the physical topology and also assigneda wavelength. This is known as the routing and wavelength assignment(RWA) problem. The combination of a route and wavelength is known as alightpath. The RWA problem is NP-complete; heuristics are typicallyused. As requests are accepted into the network, no two requests can usethe same wavelength on the same link. If an arriving request cannot finda lightpath, the request is rejected and it is said to be blocked. In anall-optical WDM system, once a lightpath is setup, the signal istransmitted all-optically through the network.

We consider the dynamic traffic model, where requests arrivesequentially, according to a stochastic process and have finite holdingtimes. The goal is to minimize request blocking, where a user's requestis denied due to lack of resources. The dynamic traffic model can befurther classified in to immediate reservation (IR) and advancereservation (AR). The data transmission of an IR demand startsimmediately upon arrival of the request and the holding time istypically unknown. AR demands, in contrast, typically specify a datatransmission start time that is sometime in the future and also specifya holding time. If a range of start times is specified, it is known asflexible advance reservation. The difference between the arrival of therequest and start of the transmission is the book-ahead time. The factthat holding time and bookahead time is known by the network allows thenetwork to efficiently optimize resource usage by maintaining stateinformation about reserved resources.

A primary motivation for our work is large data transfers over Gridnetworks. A Grid network is a collection of geographically distributedresources, such as storage nodes, super computers, and scientificequipment that are accessible to users over a network. An example of aGrid is the Large Hadron Collider Computing Grid Project. These networksoften deal with the transfer of large amounts of data in the Terabyte(TB) to Petebyte (PB) range.

We have investigated adding another dimension of flexibility to theadvance reservation framework. In addition to allowing flexible starttimes, we allow non-continuous data transmission, meaning the sendingapplication may pause transmission for a period of time and then resumelater. This means the request is broken into one or more segments, whichcan be transmitted on different lightpaths. Instead of provisioning onelarge request over a single lightpath, we can provision a number ofsmaller segments on one or more lightpaths. We will discuss the networkrequirements for this in the Section titled PROBLEM DEFINITION.Traditional advance reservation can lead to resource fragmentation wheresmall gaps in wavelength usage are unable to be utilized, as describedin L.-O. Burchard et al., “Performance issues of bandwidth reservationsfor Grid computing,” in Symposium on Computer Architecture and HighPerformance Computing, November 2003, pp. 82-90. Non-continuoustransmission can help reduce fragmentation by filling these gaps.

First, we compare the continuous single-slot advance reservation (SSAR)with both traditional continuous and noncontinuous procedures for bothfixed and flexible advance reservations. Next, we describe ournon-continuous single-slot advance reservation (NC-SSAR) and its twoversions, Segmented NC-SSAR (SEG-NC-SSAR) and Lightpath switched NC-SSAR(LPS-NC-SSAR). We show that they significantly outperform existingcontinuous flexible advance reservation heuristics. We are the first toanalyze the performance of noncontinuous RWSA for dynamic trafficwithout pre-allocation of user demands. We demonstrate that lightpathswitching for non-continuous transmission without pre-allocationprovides the best performance improvement both in terms of blocking aswell as number of lightpath switches. We discuss the related work in thenext Section. We present the problem statement in the Section titledPROBLEM DEFINITION. In the Section titled DYNAMIC NON-CONTINUOUS SINGLESLOT ADVANCE RESERVATION HEURISTICS, we describe the describedheuristics. We present the performance evaluation in the Section titledPERFORMANCE EVALUATION.

RELATED WORK

Advance reservation for optical networks was first described in J. Zhenget al., “Routing and wavelength assignment for advance reservation inwavelength-routed WDM optical networks,” in Proceedings, IEEE ICC, vol.5,2002, pp. 2722-2726. They discuss several types of advancereservation. The most commonly studied type in the literature specify astart time and duration, which is denoted by STSD (specified start,specified duration). We will further classify STSD into STSD-fixed andSTSD-flexible. STSD-fixed demands specify a single possible start time,while STSD-flexible demands specify a range of start times.STSD-flexible is the type of demand we investigate in this work. Therehave been a number of papers that describe heuristics for STSD-fixed andSTSD-flexible requests. These works consider continuous transmission.Examples include S. Figueira et al., “Advance reservation of lightpathsin optical-network based grids,” in IEEE Gridnets, 2004, and T. D.Wallace et al., “Advance lightpath reservation for WDM networks withdynamic traffic,” OSA JON, no. 7, pp. 913-924.

Non-continuous advance reservation was described in Y. Chen et al.,“Resource allocation strategies for a non-continuous sliding windowtraffic model in WDM networks,” in BroadNets 2009. They consider thestatic problem where all of the demands are given and each demand may bebroken into smaller segments. Our work focuses on the dynamic problem,which is more appropriate for Grids. Breaking large file transfers intopieces was briefly discussed in D. Andrei et al., “On-demandprovisioning of data-aggregation sessions over WDM optical networks,”IEEE/OSA Journal of Lightwave Technology, vol. 27, no. 12, pp.1846-1855, June 2009, but just as an extension to described proceduresand it was not studied in detail. They only consider breaking the fileinto a fixed number of fixed sized pieces and they do not requirewavelength continuity (traffic grooming is performed). S. Naiksatam etal., “Elastic reservations for efficient bandwidth utilization inLambdaGrids,” Future Gener. Comput. Syst., 23(1), 2007 describedflexible reservations that could be segmented. They define abandwidth-slot as the smallest unit of bandwidth a request can use. Thebandwidth-slots a request uses can be spread in any way across thetime-domain. They do not consider routing and wavelength assignment.They approach the problem strictly as a scheduling problem ofbandwidth-slots and assume the lightpaths are already established.

The baseline to this work which discusses single slot advancereservation (SSAR) in detail with suitable comparisons to traditionalheuristics, is the continuous version of the described NC-SSAR heuristicdiscussed in the paper. Readers are encouraged to refer to A. Somani etal., “Dynamic advance reservation with delayed allocation overwavelength-routed networks,” in Proc. of IEEE ICTON, June 2011 fordetails about SSAR.

Problem Definition

We now formally define the problem. We consider dynamic trafficrequests, where user requests arrive according to some stochasticprocess. We are given a network, G=(V, E, W, H), where V is the set ofnodes, E is the set of edges, and W is the number of wavelengths perlink. We assume a time-slotted network with fixed-size timeslots. Wedefine the advance reservation horizon, H, to be the number of futuretimeslots for which state information is maintained. This value willlimit how far ahead advance reservations can reserve network resources.There is a centralized scheduler that maintains the state information,which is updated after each request. The state information consists ofwhich timeslots are used on all wavelengths on all edges. It can bethought of as a three-dimensional array U [E, W, H]. The user requestscan be of two types based on the actual start time of the request, onewith fixed start time and the other with flexible start times. Therequest with fixed start time R-fixed, can be defined as a four tuple,(s, d, st, τ), where sεV is the source node, dεV is the destinationnode, st is the actual start time of the request, and τ is the durationof the request in timeslots. The second type of request is with flexiblestart times which specifies a window of start times, R-flexible can bedefined as a five tuple, (s, d, left, right, τ), where left specifiesthe earliest start time for the user request and right specifies thelatest time the request can start and the rest of the parameters aresame as defined in the previous request type. Upon arrival of a request,the scheduler must allocate resources to the request. The scheduler willthen return a vector of segments, S, called the schedule. We define asegment as a lightpath used to transfer data between a specified startand end time. A segment can be defined as a four-tuple, (t, d, P, W),where t is the start time which refers to a specific timeslot, d is theduration which is specified in number of timeslots, P is the path, and Wis the wavelength. The start time is inclusive, so the segment transmitsdata from [t; t+d−1]. Each segment follows the wavelength continuityconstraint on all links and each new segment following a differentwavelength and/or path for a particular request indicates a lightpathswitch.

Instead of generating a single route and wavelength for a given requestas in traditional RWA problems, our described heuristics generate aschedule of one or more segments across k-shortest paths while selectingthe best wavelength according to some wavelength selection policy. Wewill call this routing, wavelength, and segment assignment (RWSA).

Definition of RWSA: Given a network, G=(V,E,W,H), its current state, U[E, W, H], and an incoming dynamic request R=(s, d, left, right, τ), wemust return a schedule, S={(ti, di, Pi, Wi)} if the request wasaccommodated or block the request due to unavailability of networkresources. The segments should be selected in such a way that theyreduce blocking of future dynamic advance reservation requests. We havethe following constraints for the schedule, S:

1≦|S|≦τ  Rel. (1)

1<P _(i) ≦k|1≦P _(i) ≦W  Rel. (2)

t _(left) ≦t ₁ ≦t _(right+duration−1)  Rel. (3)

Σd _(i)=Σ  Eqn. (4)

t _(i) +d _(i) =t _(i+1)  Eqn. (5)

t _(last) ≦t _(right+duration−1)  Rel. (6)

Assume the schedule has n elements. Rel. (1) states that there must beat least one segment and there can be at most τ segments. Rel. (2)states that if we employ lightpath switching we must have at least 2,k-shortest paths or wavelengths used in the computation of theschedules. Note that if no lightpath switching is used, it suffices tohave at least 1 shortest path Rel. (3) states that the first segment canstart as early as the time specified by the left window and can start aslate as the time specified by the right window. Eqn. (4) states that thesummation of the segments durations must be equal to the duration of therequest. Eqn. (5) states that each segment must start when the previousone ends in case of continuous transmission. Rel. (6) states that thelast segment has to end before the its deadline.

Dynamic Non-Continuous Single Slot Advance Reservation Heuristics

We now present the dynamic non-continuous single slot routing andwavelength assignment heuristic procedures. Single Slot AR and theconcept of delayed allocation have been discussed in detail hereinabove.Our procedures employ a static k-shortest path route computation, whichis computed using the procedure discussed in J. Yen, “Finding the kshortest loopless paths in a network,” Management Science, vol. 17, no.11, pp. 712-716, 1971. The procedures can be classified as follows:non-continuous single slot AR with segmentation (SEG-NC-SSAR) andnon-continuous single slot AR with lightpath switching (LPS-NC-SSAR). Inwhat follows, we first show with the help of an example, the benefit ofnoncontinuous transmission as compared to continuous transmission interms of single slot advance reservation technique and then formallydescribe the procedures.

Non-Continuous Single Slot Advance Reservation

The NC-SSAR procedures aim to reduce the number of lightpath switcheswhile significantly improving the blocking performance. Due to reducedlightpaths switches the overall signaling is reduced in the network.NC-SSAR procedures follow the SSAR nature of completely avoidingpre-allocation of requests by not allocating resources until thescheduler clock has moved to one timeslot previous to the timeslotrequested for by the request, which may be the start time of the request(case a) or continuation of the same request (case b) until itscompletion. Irrespective of the case under consideration, allocation isdealt on a single slot basis. Thus we assume in the example describedbelow, all the slots which are shown as allocated are for requests whichhave either started or are continuing and the allocation is happening ona single slot basis. This delayed allocation in turn reduces thescheduler space complexity (simpler data structure) as discussedhereinabove.

As shown in FIG. 12 there are two different scenarios showing timeslotavailability and reservation information on the four lightpaths W₁P₁,W₁P₂, W₂P₁, and W₂P₂ available between a source-destination pair. Let usconsider the first scenario (left hand side of the figure) and assumethat a user request arrived at t₀ at the centralized scheduler wantingto start at time t₁ and specifies 2 timeslots of duration as its holdingtime, along with a deadline specification of 3 timeslots from andinclusive of the starting timeslot t₁. Now the scheduler runningcontinuous SSAR procedure or any continuous procedure would have beenable to provision just one timeslot, i.e., t₁ on W₁P₂, as there is nocontinuing timeslot availability on any of the wavelength paths as canbe seen by observation and thus the request would have been blocked.However, Segmented NC-SSAR overcomes that disadvantage as it is able toprovision the other pending duration on the same wavelength path W₁P₂ atnon-continuous timeslot t₃ without switching lightpath to any of thepaths on W₂ at time t₂ in an effort to remain continuous in time. Ineffect Segmented NC-SSAR reduces lightpath switching and reduces theblocking of user requests. However in the second scenario (right handside of the figure) the request could not have been possibly be acceptedas in this case even t₃ on W₁P₂ is occupied. Thus there needs to be alightpath switch in this case to be able to accommodate this request andthe Non-Continuous Lightpath switched SSAR is used in this case toprovision the second and last pending duration on time slot t₂ on eitherof the paths on W₂. Thus LPS-NC-SSAR improves blocking performance whilereducing blocking. The reduced lightpath switching as compared to othertraditional non-continuous advance reservation heuristics is broughtabout by keeping the horizon to just one time slot and avoiding the needfor pre-allocation completely as mentioned in depth in the descriptionfor avoiding pre-allocation of advance reservation requests. We outlinethe Segmented NCSSAR (SEG-NC-SSAR, Procedure 1) and lightpath switchedNC-SSAR (LPS-NC-SSAR, Procedure 2) heuristic procedures below.

Procedure 1: Segmented NC-SSAR Input: R = (s, d _({) c(i)},τ), G = (V,E, W, H), U[E, W, H] Output: Bool accepted, blocked,Schedule, S = {(t,τ, P, W)} 1 schedule = φ 2 First phase called resource provisioningphase (RPP) keeps track of the count of free wavelengths available onevery time slot t and cheeks for availability of number of wavelengthson each time slot required by the request in non- continuous timeslotsin order to successfully complete the request. If enough wavelengthsavailable then return accepted or blocked 3 then 4 Second phase requestallocation phase (RAP) finds the actual lightpath and prepares aschedule on which the request is transmitted 5 for w = 1 to W do 6|  for k = 1 to K do 7 |  |  if available(P_(k), w, t_(now)) ≧ τ andlowest index then 8 |_ |_ |_ schedule = (t_(now), τ, P_(k), w) 9 returnschedule

indicates data missing or illegible when filed

Procedure 2: Lightpath Switched NC-SSAR Input: R = (s, d_(c)(i),α, τ,w), G = (V, E, W, H), U[E, W, H] Output: Bool accepted,blocked,Schedule, S = {(t_(i), d_(i), P_(i), W_(i))}  1 schedule = φ  2First phase called resource provisioning phase (RPP) keeps track of thecount of free wavelengths available on every time slot t and checks foravailability of number of wavelengths on each timeslot required by therequest in non - continuous timeslots on different channels in order tosuccessfully complete the request. If enough wavelengths available thenreturn accepted or blocked  3 then  4 Second phase request allocationphase (RAP) finds the actual lightpath and prepares a schedule on whichthe request is transmitted  5 then  6 for w in W do  7 |  for k in K do 8 |  |  validTimes = findFreeTimes(schedule)  9 |  |  for v invalidTimes do 10 |  |  |  find segments for P_(k), w between [v.start,v.end] 11 |_ |_ |_ insert segments into schedule 12 return schedule

indicates data missing or illegible when filed

Performance Evaluation

We now provide the simulation results for our described heuristics. Wehave used the following parameters: request arrival is a Poisson processwith an exponentially distributed holding time. The horizon is largeenough (equal to 2000 timeslots) so that none of the requests areblocked due to their holding time. The time slot size vastly dependsupon the type of traffic that a network operator expects. It could beconfigured by the operator to range from seconds to hours. In oursimulations we choose a value of 10 units for our time-slot size. Theprimary performance metric is the average blocking probability of aconnection, which is defined as the fraction of connections that cannotbe scheduled. We also determine in our simulations, the average numberof lightpath switches defined as the ratio of number of lightpathswitches to the number of successfully switched requests. We simulate105 requests and take the average of 10 runs. We use different values ofk (k=1 . . . 3) for pre-computing shortest paths using Yen's k-shortestpath procedure. We evaluate our heuristics on the 14-node NSFnet.

We first discuss how the heuristics behave under constant bookaheadtimes with and without flexibility. As shown in FIG. 13A the blockingprobability of SSAR and the two non-continuous heuristics describedLPS-NC-SSAR, SEG-NCSSAR perform almost identically and are about 10-20%better in blocking performance than the traditional heuristicscontinuous (ASAR) and non-continuous with lightpath switching (NCAR). InFIG. 13B we show that without flexibility the starting delay is zero andhas no impact on the blocking performance. FIG. 13C LPS-NC-SSAR has zerolightpath switches whereas the traditional NCAR has an average of 1.6 to2.75 lightpath switches which justifies the fact that NC-SSARsignificantly reduces signaling in the network by reducing the lightpathswitches to a near zero but with a better blocking performance. Theout-of-order metric which gives the number of accepted requests whichwere out-oforder in terms of start times is zero as the book ahead timesbetween any two requests is a constant and thus leads to sequentialstart times which results in in-order AR ratio to be 1 and out-of-orderAR ratio to be 0 as shown in FIG. 13D. Next we introduce flexibility tothe equation which leads to the following observations. As shown in FIG.14A we observe that both ASAR and NCAR have marginally better blockingperformance at lower loads than the described noncontinuous heuristics.This is due to the fact that both ASAR and NCAR pick the best wavelengthpath based on the packed wavelength wavelength-selection policy (referto N. Charbonneau et al., “Dynamic non-continuous advance reservationover wavelength-routed networks,” in 20th IEEE ICCCN 2011 for details).Packing the wavelength results in selecting the best wavelengthtimeslots leads to the marginal improvement in blocking performancewhile SSAR and NC-SSAR heuristics have a slightly higher blocking ratethan NCAR and ASAR. This is because the continuous and non-continuousSSAR heuristics pick the earliest available wavelength timeslot whichmay not lead to optimal wavelength assignment and thus marginallyincreasing the chances of the request being blocked. On the other handat higher loads, SSAR, LPS-NC-SSAR, and SEG-NC-SSAR perform identical orslightly better than the baseline heuristics ASAR and NCAR. Thisbetterment in blocking performance at higher loads is facilitated by thedelayed allocation in the second phase inherent to the continuous andnon-continuous SSAR heuristics which is brought about by theintroduction of flexibility in turn causing an increase in out-of-orderrequests as shown in FIG. 14D which helps in better provisioninglightpaths to requests at higher loads. The start delay or delay windowfor SSAR, LPS-NC-SSAR, and SEG-NC-SSAR is significantly lower (about75%) than the baseline heuristics as shown in FIG. 14B while keeping theno. of lightpath switches to zero thereby reducing the effectivesignaling in the network as shown in FIG. 14C.

In small networks and in ideal scenarios the bookahead time for ARrequests might be constant to avoid channel contentions. But in realityand in large networks this is hardly the case where requests arrive andmore importantly start at random times. Thus we take into considerationwhen bookahead times are uniformly random which depicts the requests inreal and large networks. As shown in FIG. 15A the blocking probabilityof SSAR and LPS-NC-SSAR, SEG-NCSSAR heuristics perform almost identicalto each other and are consistently and significantly about 50-60% betterin blocking performance than ASAR and NCAR. This performance improvementin blocking is brought about by significant increase in out-of-orderrequests as shown in FIG. 15D coupled with the delayed allocationoffered by the SSAR and NC-SSAR heuristics which leads to efficientchannel allocation with zero lightpath switching as shown in FIG. 15C.Thus reducing signaling in the network due to lightpath switching to anear zero while significantly increasing the blocking performance. Next,we introduce flexibility to the AR requests. This leads to the followingobservations. As shown in FIG. 16A we observe that SSAR and NC-SSARheuristics improve blocking performance by more than 30% at high loadsand are marginally lower in terms of blocking performance at low loadscompared to the baseline heuristics. For SSAR and the describedLPSNC-SSAR, SEG-NC-SSAR heuristics the delay window or the start delayas shown in FIG. 16B is extremely less when compared to the baselines asthe timeslot allocation is done without any wavelength optimizationpolicy for the earliest timeslot available. At higher loads thedescribed heuristics LPS-NC-SSAR, SEG-NC-SSAR lead to significantlylower blocking as the delayed allocation aids in better selecting thewavelength and helps accommodating relatively smaller requests onchannels with fewer timeslots and relatively larger requests on channelswith larger availability of timeslots which is implied by the increasein out-of-order arrivals and their accommodation as shown in FIG. 16Dwhile decreasing the lightpath switching to a near zero as shown in FIG.16C. We can also observe from all the blocking probability graphs thatwithout flexibility the described heuristics perform significantly andconsistently better at all loads due to packing of requests at theearliest available timeslot with delayed allocation, but withflexibility at lower loads the baseline heuristics perform marginallybetter as the selection of the best wavelength slot is possible due topacking of the wavelengths and using the entire flexibility window whilepre allocating requests which leads to increased blocking at higherloads and increased lightpath switches which contributes to increasedsignaling in the network. Also, for large-scale networks with heavytraffic, LPS-NC-SSAR is the ideal candidate as it reduces lightpathswitching to a near zero when compared to three plus recorded for NCARand has significantly lower blocking probability when compared to restof the heuristics. Results for k=2 and 3 have been obtained but areomitted here.

We have addressed the problem of increased blocking due topreallocation, signaling overhead due to lightpath switches, andincreased start delays. by introducing a novel single-slotnon-continuous AR routing, wavelength, and slot assignment mechanism. Wediscussed the merits of both the versions of NC-SSAR and compared themto the traditional continuous and non-continuous RWSA heuristics. Weconclude that the described NC-SSAR heuristics are the best candidatesfor provisioning lightpaths for AR requests over optical WDM networks asit successfully overcomes the above stated problems and is significantlybetter than the baseline heuristics.

DEFINITIONS

CHANNEL: A channel as used herein refers to a data transmission media.One example of a channel is a single wavelength range of a wavelengthdivision multiplexed (WDM) optical communication system. For example, asingle fiber of a bundle of fibers in an optical communication systemtypically has a number of designated wavelength ranges, each wavelengthrange providing a unique channel as defined herein. A channel alsoincludes a RF frequency (e.g. a RF carrier having some RF bandwidth) anda RF transmission having subcarriers, each subcarrier having a RFbandwidth.

PATH: A path includes a transmission path from a source to a destination(generally a geographic source and destination). In an opticalcommunication system, a path can include, for example, one continuousfiber, or any number of fibers including active and/or passive switchingand/or another suitable signal splicing techniques. There can bemultiple paths between a given source and destination. The paths can besubstantially co-located (e.g. parallel fiber cables) or can run throughcompletely different physical paths (e.g. optical fiber cables runthrough different cities).

Recording the results from an operation or data acquisition, such as forexample, recording results of a particular data transmission schedulingmethod is understood to mean and is defined herein as writing outputdata in a non-transitory manner to a storage element, to amachine-readable storage medium, or to a storage device. Non-transitorymachine-readable storage media that can be used in the invention includeelectronic, magnetic and/or optical storage media, such as magneticfloppy disks and hard disks; a DVD drive, a CD drive that in someembodiments can employ DVD disks, any of CD-ROM disks (i.e., read-onlyoptical storage disks), CD-R disks (i.e., write-once, read-many opticalstorage disks), and CD-RW disks (i.e., rewriteable optical storagedisks); and electronic storage media, such as RAM, ROM, EPROM, CompactFlash cards, PCMCIA cards, or alternatively SD or SDIO memory; and theelectronic components (e.g., floppy disk drive, DVD drive, CD/CD-R/CD-RWdrive, or Compact Flash/PCMCIA/SD adapter) that accommodate and readfrom and/or write to the storage media. Unless otherwise explicitlyrecited, any reference herein to “record” or “recording” is understoodto refer to a non-transitory record or a non-transitory recording.

As is known to those of skill in the machine-readable storage mediaarts, new media and formats for data storage are continually beingdevised, and any convenient, commercially available storage medium andcorresponding read/write device that may become available in the futureis likely to be appropriate for use, especially if it provides any of agreater storage capacity, a higher access speed, a smaller size, and alower cost per bit of stored information. Well known oldermachine-readable media are also available for use under certainconditions, such as punched paper tape or cards, magnetic recording ontape or wire, optical or magnetic reading of printed characters (e.g.,OCR and magnetically encoded symbols) and machine-readable symbols suchas one and two dimensional bar codes. Recording data transmissionscheduling data for later use (e.g., writing data transmissionscheduling data to memory or to digital memory) can be performed toenable the use of the recorded information as output, as data fordisplay to a user, or as data to be made available for later use. Suchdigital memory elements or chips can be standalone memory devices, orcan be incorporated within a device of interest. “Writing output data”or “writing data transmission scheduling data to memory” is definedherein as including writing transformed data to registers within amicrocomputer.

“Microcomputer” is defined herein as synonymous with microprocessor,microcontroller, and digital signal processor (“DSP”). It is understoodthat memory used by the microcomputer, including for exampleinstructions for data processing coded as “firmware” can reside inmemory physically inside of a microcomputer chip or in memory externalto the microcomputer or in a combination of internal and externalmemory. Similarly, analog signals can be digitized by a standaloneanalog to digital converter (“ADC”) or one or more ADCs or multiplexedADC channels can reside within a microcomputer package. It is alsounderstood that field programmable array (“FPGA”) chips or applicationspecific integrated circuits (“ASIC”) chips can perform microcomputerfunctions, either in hardware logic, software emulation of amicrocomputer, or by a combination of the two. Apparatus having any ofthe inventive features described herein can operate entirely on onemicrocomputer or can include more than one microcomputer.

General purpose programmable computers useful for controllinginstrumentation, recording signals and analyzing signals or dataaccording to the present description can be any of a personal computer(PC), a microprocessor based computer, a portable computer, or othertype of processing device. The general purpose programmable computertypically comprises a central processing unit, a storage or memory unitthat can record and read information and programs using machine-readablestorage media, a communication terminal such as a wired communicationdevice or a wireless communication device, an output device such as adisplay terminal, and an input device such as a keyboard. The displayterminal can be a touch screen display, in which case it can function asboth a display device and an input device. Different and/or additionalinput devices can be present such as a pointing device, such as a mouseor a joystick, and different or additional output devices can be presentsuch as an enunciator, for example a speaker, a second display, or aprinter. The computer can run any one of a variety of operating systems,such as for example, any one of several versions of Windows, or ofMacOS, or of UNIX, or of Linux. Computational results obtained in theoperation of the general purpose computer can be stored for later use,and/or can be displayed to a user. At the very least, eachmicroprocessor-based general purpose computer has registers that storethe results of each computational step within the microprocessor, whichresults are then commonly stored in cache memory for later use.

Many functions of electrical and electronic apparatus can be implementedin hardware (for example, hard-wired logic), in software (for example,logic encoded in a program operating on a general purpose processor),and in firmware (for example, logic encoded in a non-volatile memorythat is invoked for operation on a processor as required). The presentinvention contemplates the substitution of one implementation ofhardware, firmware and software for another implementation of theequivalent functionality using a different one of hardware, firmware andsoftware. To the extent that an implementation can be representedmathematically by a transfer function, that is, a specified response isgenerated at an output terminal for a specific excitation applied to aninput terminal of a “black box” exhibiting the transfer function, anyimplementation of the transfer function, including any combination ofhardware, firmware and software implementations of portions or segmentsof the transfer function, is contemplated herein, so long as at leastsome of the implementation is performed in hardware.

Theoretical Discussion

Although the theoretical description given herein is thought to becorrect, the operation of the devices described and claimed herein doesnot depend upon the accuracy or validity of the theoretical description.That is, later theoretical developments that may explain the observedresults on a basis different from the theory presented herein will notdetract from the inventions described herein.

Any patent, patent application, or publication identified in thespecification is hereby incorporated by reference herein in itsentirety. Any material, or portion thereof, that is said to beincorporated by reference herein, but which conflicts with existingdefinitions, statements, or other disclosure material explicitly setforth herein is only incorporated to the extent that no conflict arisesbetween that incorporated material and the present disclosure material.In the event of a conflict, the conflict is to be resolved in favor ofthe present disclosure as the preferred disclosure.

While the present invention has been particularly shown and describedwith reference to the preferred mode as illustrated in the drawing, itwill be understood by one skilled in the art that various changes indetail may be affected therein without departing from the spirit andscope of the invention as defined by the claims.

1. A method of scheduling data transmissions from a source to adestination, comprising the steps of: providing: a communication systemhaving a number of channels and a number of paths, each of said channelshaving a plurality of designated time slots, and a bandwidth defined assaid number of channels multiplied by said number of paths, and abandwidth capacity defined as said bandwidth multiplied by said numberof designated time slots; receiving two or more data transmissionrequests, each of said two or more data transmission requestsdesignating a transmission of data from a source to a destination, eachof said two or more data transmission requests including a requestedstart time TS of transmission and a requested number of time slots forsaid transmission of said data; provisioning said transmission of saiddata corresponding to each of said two or more data transmissionrequests via said communication bandwidth without designating a channelof said number of channels and without designating a path of said numberof paths; receiving data corresponding to at least one of said two ormore data transmission requests; waiting until a current time within atime interval t of an earliest requested start time TS of said two ormore data transmission requests; allocating at said current time each ofsaid two or more data transmission requests to a channel of said numberof channels and to a path of said number of paths in a way whichoptimizes a use of said bandwidth capacity; transmitting said datacorresponding to said at least one of said two or more data transmissionrequests that has been allocated on said allocated channel and saidallocated path; and repeating said steps of waiting, allocating, andtransmitting until each of said two or more data transmission requeststhat have been provisioned for a transmission of data is satisfied. 2.The method of scheduling data transmissions from a source to adestination of claim 1, wherein said step of provisioning saidtransmission comprises provisioning said transmission of said dataduring a request provisioning phase.
 3. The method of scheduling datatransmissions from a source to a destination of claim 1, wherein saidstep of allocating comprises allocating at least one of said two or moredata transmission requests during a request allocation phase.
 4. Themethod of scheduling data transmissions from a source to a destinationof claim 1, wherein said step of providing a communication bandwidth isperformed using an optical communication network.
 5. The method ofscheduling data transmissions from a source to a destination of claim 4,wherein said step of providing an optical communication network isperformed using an optical communication network having wavelengthdivision multiplexed transmission capability.
 6. A system forprovisioning data transmission from a source to a destination,comprising: a communication system having a number of channels and anumber of paths, each of said channels having a plurality of designatedtime slots, in which a communication bandwidth is defined as the productof said number of channels times said number of paths and a bandwidthcapacity is defined as the product of said bandwidth times said numberof designated time slots; and a processor having instructions providedon a machine readable medium, said processor configured to perform thefollowing steps when said instructions are operative: determining saidcommunication bandwidth and said bandwidth capacity; receiving two ormore data transmission requests, each of said two or more datatransmission requests designating a transmission of data from a sourceto a destination, each of said two or more data transmission requestsincluding a requested start time TS of transmission and a requestednumber of time slots for said transmission of said data; provisioningsaid transmission of said data corresponding to each of said two or moredata transmission requests via said communication bandwidth withoutdesignating a channel of said number of channels and without designatinga path of said number of paths; receiving data corresponding to at leastone of said two or more data transmission requests; waiting until acurrent time within a time interval t of an earliest requested starttime TS of said two or more data transmission requests; allocating atsaid current time each of said two or more data transmission requests toa channel of said number of channels and to a path of said number ofpaths in a way which optimizes a use of said bandwidth capacity;transmitting said data corresponding to said at least one of said two ormore data transmission requests that has been allocated on saidallocated channel and said allocated path; and repeating said steps ofwaiting, allocating, and transmitting until each of said two or moredata transmission requests that have been provisioned for a transmissionof data is satisfied.